There’s no single magic plugin for the whole flow, but a couple of very easy addons cover both jobs:
Option 1: Elementor (free) — most popular route
- Plugins → Add New → search “Elementor” → Install → Activate.
- Edit your Home page with Elementor.
- Drag in the Posts widget (free version is fine).
- In its settings, toggle “Excerpt” on — that gives you the brief description under each post title. You can also control how many posts show, columns, image, read-more link, etc.
- For the separate posts page: just set Settings → Reading → Posts page to a blank “Blog” page as before (or build a fancier one with the same Posts widget).
Option 2: Content Views / Blog Designer — lighter, posts-only If you don’t want a full page builder, Content Views or WP Blog Manager do exactly this: install, and use their shortcode/block (e.g. [pt_view id="x"]) on your homepage, which shows post titles with short excerpts. Options control length of the description, layout, and which categories to pull from.
Quick honest recommendation:
- If you might redesign the site later → Elementor (Posts widget + excerpt toggle, done).
- If you just want titles + short descriptions on the homepage, nothing else → Content Views (free, lightweight, no learning curve).
Both leave the actual posts archive at /blog from the Reading settings we set earlier, and the homepage block just displays the recent ones with excerpts.
Which direction do you want — I can give exact click-by-click for either?